Changelog

Note: YouTube does not allow changes to videos once they are uploaded. As a result, you may notice mistakes in the YouTube versions that have been fixed in the audio version of the podcast. If you notice a mistake that is not listed here as fixed, please reach out.

2023-12-31

2023-10-22
  • 280 (Gettysburg with Gregory J.W. Urwin): @ericsierra-franco7802 on YouTube pointed out the graphics for this episode erroneously show the JFK movie poster. Since YouTube doesn’t allow replacing a video, the old version has been removed and a new one uploaded. For posterity, you can view the broken version and its comments here: https://youtu.be/AhAH8ItQ75U
2020-06-13
  • 146 (Young Guns with Chris Wimmer): It came to our attention the version of this episode on YouTube cuts off at the 44m 49s mark. The episode should be 01h 05m 05s. Since YouTube doesn’t allow replacing a video, the old version has been removed and a new one uploaded. For posterity, you can view the broken version and its comments here: https://youtu.be/fHi35Qfg7V4
2019-10-15
  • 141 v12 (Tolkien with John Garth): The introduction erroneously referred to John Garth’s book as “one of the best biographies” of J.R.R. Tolkien’s life during World War I. It is, in fact, the only biography covering this time. As such, the change to mentioning it as “the definitive account.”
  • 141 v12 (Tolkien with John Garth): Also, John pointed out two small mistakes in his answers. He erroneously said Mabel Tolkien died of tuberculosis when she passed from diabetes. Change is to removed the reference to tuberculosis.
  • 141 v12 (Tolkien with John Garth): He also included the name “Balin” in the list of Norse mythology terms, but it is not. Change is to remove that from the list.
2018-12-22
  • 03 v3 (The Imitation Game): A listener pointed out that we accidentally said Bletchley Park was located in Germany, then went on to talk about how it was located in England. Oops. Since that’s one of the first episodes for BOATS and my recording process has evolved since then, recording a single line would be obvious. We have re-recorded and re-produced the entire episode.
2018-07-13
  • 56 v5 (The Experiment): New evidence has come to light that suggests the Stanford Prison Experiment wasn’t what we thought for decades. More on this. For this episode, we added a quick update to the beginning to acknowledge the new evidence.
2017-10-24
  • 50 v3 (Mulan): Updated an explanation of “Hua” and “Fa” being the same word in Mandarin and Cantonese, respectively. Thanks to Kelly for helping to clarify this.
2017-09-22
  • 57 v7 (Behind the True Story of Bitter Harvest): Updated the Mikola Khlyhovy quote at the request of Richard.
2017-08-31
  • 59 v5 (Tombstone): Fixed edit error that omitted the explanation of Great Depression and Long Depression dates were the contraction and not the entire depression. Added further clarification as well and cleaned up audio a bit further.
  • 54 v3 (Men of Honor): Added qualifiers to clarify Carl as first African-American deep-sea diver in the U.S. Navy instead of just the first diver. Added reference of John Henry “Dick” Turpin, who was an earlier African-American diver in the Navy.
2017-06-16
  • 57 v6 (Behind the True Story of Bitter Harvest): Further clarified a few points and fixed some mispronunciations at the request of Richard.
2017-07-14
  • 29 v3 (The Sound of Music): Fixed mispronunciations.
2016-11-04
  • 24 v3 (The Conjuring): Corrected misinformation about accusations surrounding Bathsheba and the Arnold Estate.

FAQ: What is this changelog?

 

Nearly everything that’s cloud-connected is an ongoing development. Rarely is something put onto the internet and left. Facebook posts or comments are often edited after the fact. The teams behind operating systems like Windows, macOS and Linux are constantly pushing out updates with new features and fixes that might have somehow made it through into the released product.

To help clarify things, in the development world, a changelog is exactly what it sounds like—a running list of changes. As succinctly put by the team at Keep a Changelog from MIT:

A changelog is a file which contains a curated, chronologically ordered list of notable changes for each version of a project.

Just like the bugs and improvements that the world’s largest companies face, creating content can be an ongoing process. When you listen to an episode of Based on a True Story, I want it to be as accurate as possible with the knowledge that no single podcast episode can cover every little detail of each topic.

That’s why I’ve decided to adopt a similar model from the development world. Like software, by the time an episode of Based on a True Story is released, it has gone through multiple rounds of quality assurance (QA) and many edits and fixes have been made. Like software, that doesn’t mean there aren’t mistakes that make it through to the published episode.

Since this is a weekly podcast, there’s no way I can spend months or years researching each topic.

There are periodic changes that I’ll make to episodes after they’ve been released. The primary reason is for clarification or fixing errors. Sometimes these are kindly (but usually not so kindly) pointed out by listeners. Sometimes they’re tweaks or improvements that I want to make.

If you notice an issue in an episode, feel free to let me know and I’d be happy to make an update as soon as possible.

 

TL;DR: Everyone makes mistakes and I’m just one guy making a podcast that you get to listen to for free. 🙂 I want the content to be accurate, so I’m happy to fix any mistakes. The nicer you are when pointing it out helps determine how quickly I want to make the update.

FAQ: Why was my comment on YouTube deleted?

 

YouTube doesn’t let you replace a video. This means the only way to make a change on a YouTube video is to upload a completely new video. For the sake of clarity (i.e., not to add to the confusion), I’ll also remove the old video so the only video on YouTube for each episode is the most recent version.

Unfortunately, this means all views, likes, comments and so on for the video that gets replaced are also gone. So if you’ve commented on a YouTube video with a fix that needs to be made and I’ve made that fix, it’s not that I’m deleting your comment specifically but replacing the whole video means your comment (and anyone else’s comments) will go away as well.

TL;DR: Your comment wasn’t deleted, the entire video was replaced.